“Is it undemocratic that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jennifer Granholm can’t run for president because they weren’t born in the country? If you think about it, of all of the forms of disqualification that we have, the one that disqualifies people for engaging in insurrection is the most democratic because it’s the one where people choose themselves to be disqualified.
“Donald Trump is in that tiny, tiny number of people who have essentially disqualified themselves. We have a number of disqualifications in the Constitution for serving as president. For example, age. I mean, I’ve got a colleague who’s a great young politician, Maxwell Frost, he’s 26. He can’t run for president. Now would we say that that’s undemocratic?
“Well, that’s the rules of the Constitution. If you don’t like the rules of the Constitution, change the Constitution.” – Rep. Jamie Raskin, speaking today on CNN.
.@RepRaskin tells @DanaBashCNN that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas should “absolutely” recuse himself from any future 14th Amendment ballot disqualification case against Donald Trump, but “the question is, what do we do if he doesn't recuse himself?” pic.twitter.com/1SW5F9v2Sj
This is a great cartoon. Please go to the link above and read it, and understand that is how the wealthy really think of the rest of us, and our having anything. Hugs. Scottie
I read on a different post that Christian nationalist feel entitled to force everyone to view their religious material. And only their religious matter. See they know that this country is a Christian nation and atheist have stolen it from them. Just like the 2020 election was stolen, and just like they know it is their country which to them means the maga right wing conservative minority. You just can not argue with these people, they are so convinced of their belief in a formerly religious country just as they are sure their god exists, and only their god. But it is not good enough to force their church doctrines on the public in our country. They need to force their god all over the world. Hugs. Scottie
Rep. Tim Walberg, a former Bible salesman, encouraged Ugandan leaders to resist U.S. efforts to roll back the vicious law.
Every once in a while, the right in the U.S. can’t help but look longingly at countries where repression of LGBTQ is a matter of law. But Rep. Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican, went one step further. He actually took a trip to Uganda to meet with leaders there andurge them to “stand firm”in support of their draconian anti-LGBTQ law,which includes the death penalty for gay people.
Walberg took the trip last October, but it escaped notice until Salon revealed it this week. Walberg was the keynote speaker at the Uganda’s National Prayer Breakfast. Uganda President Yoweri Museveni, who signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act into law in May, was among those present for Walberg’s speech. Museveni said that Walberg’s presence proved that there were Museveni later said that Walberg’s speech showed that some Americans “think like us.”
“Though the rest of the world is pushing back on you, though there are other major countries that are trying to get into you and ultimately change you, stand firm. Stand firm,” Walberg counseled the attendees.
Walberg cited the Bible as justification for a law to kill people. “Worthless is the thought of the world,” Walberg said. “[W]orthless, for instance, is the thought of the World Bank, or the World Health Organization, or the United Nations, or, sadly, some in our administration in America who say, ‘You are wrong for standing for values that God created,’ for saying there are male and female and God created them.’”
“Whose side do we want to be on?” Walberg continued. “God’s side. Not the World Bank, not the United States of America, necessarily, not the U.N. God’s side.”
Walberg explicitly aligned himself with Museveni and the Ugandan legislators who overwhelmingly passed the “Kill the Gays” bill. Referring to the Ugandan president, Walberg said, “He knows that he has a Parliament, and … even congressmen like me who will say, ‘We stand with you.’”
A former Bible salesman, Walberg has always been a standard issue religious conservative in Congress. HRC designated him a member of its Hall of Shame in 2014. This year he was the author of a provision he called the Parental Rights Over the Education and Care of Their (PROTECT) Kids Act, part of a larger GOP bill that went nowhere.Under Walberg’s provision, schools would be required to get parental consent before changing a student’s pronounsor preferred names.
His trip to Uganda was sponsored by the U.S. National Prayer Breakfast, a formerly bipartisan group that has recently taken a hard-right turn. The new head of the groupis Caroline Aderholt,a former leader Concerned Women of America, a long-time anti-LGBTQ group. Aderholt’s husband is Rep. Robert Aderholt, a Republican from Alabama who once tried to stop adoption agencies from allowing gay people to adopt.
While Walberg has gotten blowback for his comments, don’t expect his fellow Republicans to condemn him. If anything, Walberg is saying what at least a few other Christian nationalist types in the ranks are thinking as well. He’s just another reminder that when it comes to today’s Republican party, nothing is considered entirely beyond the pale, even killing LGBTQ people.
As conservatives become more radicalized and grow more detached from reality, their perception of the world is changing as well. In this video we’ll look at several delusional claims made by conservatives.
She is one of the people who claim to know more and be more moral than everyone else so she / them get to tell the rest of us how we must live and how our schools should be run. The article below shows how unqualified these people are to tell others how to live their lives. These people are simply self entitled ego driven people who feel entitled to rule over how others live, while often not living that way themselves. I won’t be coloring this one, too much in it is triggering to me.
Randy was visiting us the other day and we touched a bit on my abuse. For something realted. I told them something I had not told before. By the time I was 7 during my adoptive parents parties with their friends, I would be set / perched on the counter with all the booze and mixers and would be required to fix drinks for the people. They would come to me and hand me their glass, tell me what they wanted, I would make the drink and hand it back. If I did the job correctly and everyone left happy, I was rewarded but if anyone complained I was disciplined. Often right then and painfully humiliated. Sometimes I would have to stand at the counter and wait on the people playing cards, watching for their drinks to get low and offering to refill them. I learned to never let an empty glass go unaddressed. Needless to say, I did not go into detail and it was a brief mention.
A former Pennsylvania lieutenant governor candidate and outspoken voice in the conservative “parental rights” school movement has been charged with punching a teenager while hosting an underage drinking party at her Bucks County home in September.
Clarice Schillinger, 36, is facing criminal charges of assault, harassment and furnishing minors with alcohol during her daughter’s birthday party, according to the case filed in late October. Her attorney has denied all charges and said she will fight them in court.
Schillinger made an unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor as a Republican last year and has played an instrumental role in a political action committee that has poured more than $800,000 into Pennsylvania school district races since 2021. The PAC has focused on supporting school board candidates who opposed COVID-19 lockdowns and argue left-wing ideologies are invading the education system.
In the recent criminal case, Schillinger is accused of punching a partygoer several times in the face during a series of alleged outbursts by drunken adults at her home on Liz Circle in Doylestown, according to an affidavit of probable cause.
The documents state that during the event — which started Sept. 29 and went past midnight — Schillinger’s then-boyfriend allegedly grabbed a 16-year-old by the neck for intervening in a fight between the couple and hit a 15-year-old in the face during an argument over football. According to the allegations in court papers, her intoxicated mother also punched the older teen in the eye and chased him around the kitchen island. Police said they had cellphone recordings of some of these reported events.
To escape the unruly adults, several minors started making their way out of the home, even as Schillinger ordered them to stay, court documents allege.
Cellphone footage showed that as the teens gathered in the foyer Schillinger lunged toward one partygoer before others began restraining her. That individual told police Schillinger struck him three times with a closed fist but that he wasn’t injured, according to the affidavit.
Schillinger had been throwing a 17th birthday party for her daughter that night, hosting about 20 teens in her basement, where there was a bar stocked with New Amsterdam vodka and Malibu Bay Breeze rum, police wrote in the affidavit. In addition to supplying the underage group with alcohol, she allegedly poured liquor for the teens, asked them to take a shot with her and played beer pong with them, witnesses later told authorities.
State law makes it illegal to serve or allow minors to drink alcohol.
One of the teen’s parents called police early the morning of Sept. 30 to report the assaults and the underage drinking at Schillinger’s home. Investigators interviewed multiple teens who had attended the party, the affidavit states.
This wasn’t the first time police visited Schillinger’s home — which she’s been renting since the spring — for reports of an underage party, according to court documents.
Emergency dispatch data provided by the Bucks County Emergency Service Division logged at least four different calls at the address.
Buckingham Township police responded to a noise complaint call and possible underage party at Schillinger’s home on Sept. 24, the weekend before the birthday party, according to 911 data and court records.
Police reported in one affidavit spotting a number of beer cans strewn around the property and street that night. They also saw about 20 teens dart into the home and, when they tried speaking with Schillinger, found her to be “intoxicated and uncooperative,” the affidavit states.
Authorities responded to another noise complaint at Schillinger’s home involving “intoxicated subjects” just after midnight on Sept. 29, though an affidavit says police only made contact with Schillinger’s then-boyfriend, Shan Wilson, that night.
Schillinger is scheduled for a late January preliminary hearing. Her mother, Danette Bert, and Wilson were charged with assault and harassment in connection with the party, but those charges were withdrawn when they pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in early December, court records show.
In an email, Schillinger said that her case had been dropped and suggested Wilson, whom she described as an “angry ex boyfriend,” was behind the accusations. However, online court records show the case is still active, and a spokesman for the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office said Wednesday that the charges are not being dismissed.
Schillinger has not responded to a request for further comment, including why she believes the charges against her were dropped.
While Wilson did contact the USA Today Network about the incident, the affidavit against Schillinger did not include any statements from him and relied instead on the testimony of teenage witnesses and the cellphone footage.
“Ms. Schillinger has dedicated her life to public service,” Schillinger’s attorney Matthew Brittenburg said in an emailed statement Wednesday. “Additionally, she has always been a law abiding citizen. Ms. Schillinger looks forward to the opportunity to defend against these allegations.”
Who is Clarice Schillinger?
Dissatisfied with school closures that followed the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Schillinger created a political committee to help fund school board candidates who made strict adherence to in-person education their top campaign promise.
That PAC, Keeping Kids In School, focused more closely to school districts near Schillinger’s former home in Ambler, Montgomery County, by giving out thousands of dollars to smaller PACs backing slates of candidates running on an “open schools” platform.
Bucks County venture capitalist and Central Bucks parent Paul Martino took notice of Schillinger’s PAC before the municipal primary in May 2021, and the two created Back To School PA later that summer.
Martino initially put up $500,000 of his own money for Back To School PA to disburse $10,000 checks to local school board races across the state.
Schillinger told the conservative news organization Broad+Liberty after that year’s election that Back To School saw an “incredible win” with 113 of 182 candidates supported by the PAC winning elections.
Back To School took credit for flipping at least six school districts in that story, including Pennridge and Quakertown Community school districts in Bucks County; Harrisburg City in Dauphin County; Hempfield in Lancaster County; Palmyra in Lebanon County; and Southeastern in York County.
The PAC also gave $10,000 to Bucks Families for Leadership, which was an earlier PAC Martino created and funded backing Republican candidates in the 2021 Central Bucks school board race.
Three of the five Central Bucks Republicans that ran in 2021 made it onto the board, but this year’s municipal election saw Democrat candidates sweep five seats and take a 6-3 majority.
While Schillinger’s original PAC and Back To School were described as bipartisan and focused on the single-issue of school closures by her and Martino, most of the candidates endorsed were Republican and often opposed to other pandemic mitigations like requiring masks in schools.
Schillinger threw her hat in the ring for public office in 2022 joining eight other candidates in the Republican primary for lieutenant governor. Schillinger finished fourth, gaining over 148,000 votes of the 1.2 million cast for that office.
Schillinger announced that Back To School PA would be going national during a July 25, 2022, episode of 1210 WPHT’s The Dom Giordano Program.
“Back To School USA is really going to be focused on putting candidates in place that will put our children and their education first,” Schillinger said. “Right now, we are not doing that. We are more focused on these woke and gender ideas.”
A website for the national PAC, created in October 2021, is no longer publicly accessible.
Martino told Lehigh Valley News in September that Back To School USA was “more of an idea right now” but indicated Schillinger was still involved in a fundamental way.
He declined to comment on the charges against Schillinger but wrote in an email this week that Back To School USA “never got off the ground” because other projects took priority last year.
These laws are not based on medical science nor on any evidence of the conspiracies to turn cis kids into trans kids. That doesn’t happen any more than straight kids get turned gay by seeing a rainbow flag or reading a book with LGBTQIA characters. No these laws are based on bigotry and religious doctrines. How many times do you hear anti-trans people say god doesn’t make mistakes, so you have to be the gender of your body. But they said the same thing about people being gay decades ago, that people couldn’t be born gay because god did make mistakes. Guess what, it is not a mistake to be gay if you are gay and it is not a mistake to be trans if you identify as a gender different from what is showing between your legs. It is ignorance, hate, bigotry, and religious indoctrination masquerading as fake concern for “the children”. Hugs. Scottie
“Transgender children should receive equal treatment under the law. Parents should have the right to make the most fundamental decisions about how to care for their children,” Winmill said in his ruling.
“Every family wants what is best for their children, and families who love and accept their transgender youth are no different,” Li Nowlin-Sohl, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project said in a statement. “These dangerous efforts to control our bodies and our families threaten the well-being of trans youth, the strength of our communities, and the ability of every family to determine what’s best for their child.”
“This victory is significant for Idaho transgender youth and their parents,” one advocate said.
A federal court ruled on Tuesdaythat an Idaho law prohibiting doctors from providing transgender minors with access to gender-affirming care is likely unconstitutional and blockedthe law from taking effect. The gender-affirming healthcare ban, which was originally planned to go into effect on January 1, would have made providing puberty blockers and hormone therapies to transgender youth a felony.
“This victory is significant for Idaho transgender youth and their parents, and will have an immediate positive impact on their daily lives,” Leo Morales, executive director of the ACLU of Idaho, said in a statement.
Judge B. Lynn Winmill of the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho heldthat Idaho’s anti-trans law likely violated the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause under the 14th Amendment.
“Transgender children should receive equal treatment under the law. Parents should have the right to make the most fundamental decisions about how to care for their children,” Winmill said in his ruling.
RELATED STORY
“Every family wants what is best for their children, and families who love and accept their transgender youth are no different,” Li Nowlin-Sohl, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project said in a statement. “These dangerous efforts to control our bodies and our families threaten the well-being of trans youth, the strength of our communities, and the ability of every family to determine what’s best for their child.”
Another plaintiff in the lawsuit, Pam Poe, a 15-year-old trans girl, “struggled with depression, anxiety and self-harm” before receiving gender-affirming care which “greatly improved” her mental health. If the gender-affirming healthcare ban went into effect, her and her family would have considered leaving the state.
“This judicial decision is a much-needed ray of hope for trans people amid a years-long onslaught against their rights to access health care and ability to navigate the world around them,” Morales said in a press release. “Everyone should be free to live and thrive in their authentic identity, which means transgender people should not be shut out of accessing medically sound health care.”
Idaho is one of 22 states that have restricted or banned transgender youth from accessing gender-affirming care, according to the Movement Advancement Project(MAP). In a recent report, MAP described the gender-affirming healthcare bans as part of a “war against LGBTQ people in America and their very right and ability to openly exist.” While many of these bans have been temporarily blocked by the courts, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixthand EleventhCircuits have reversed lower court injunctions, allowing bans in Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama to go into effect.
Research by the Trevor Projectshows that debates around anti-trans bills negatively affect transgender and nonbinary youth’s mental health and a majority of those trans youth (55 percent) said anti-trans bills “very negatively” affected their mental health. Gender-affirming healthcare bans don’t just hurt transgender and nonbinary people, but also affect the health and well-being of LGBTQ+ adults, according to a Human Rights Campaign poll. The poll found that 8 in 10 LGBTQ adults said that the bans made them feel less safe and “worsen[ed] harmful stereotypes, discrimination, hate and stigma.”
A MESSAGE FROM TRUTHOUT’S EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
For 22 years, Truthout has been a platform for new and daring ideas, uplifting voices and producing trailblazing, award-winning journalism. The stories we’ve published over the last two decades have been read by tens of millions of people and inspired the conversations and actions that are necessary for social change.
But to continue publishing meaningful, powerful, inspiring journalism, we still need to raise $65,000 before December 31st — and for a limited time, any donation you make will be matched, dollar for dollar.
This fundraiser is our most important drive, and the perfect time to make your end-of-year donation. Your support is both vitally needed, and deeply appreciated, so if you’re in a position to give, please make your tax-deductible gift today.
Photo: Ike Hayman
Scottie's Playtime 